Experts from different sectors of the Nigerian economy in a recent conference held in Lagos had highlighted the realities and impact of AI, technology on African futures and global business as a game changer. Following this, they made a clarion call to the creative, education, finance, manufacturing and other industries to embrace the use of AI and technology that makes operations faster and better.
Speaking on the essence of the conference with the theme; ‘Global Education And The Future of Africa’ the convener, Tine Africa Changemakers Conference 2026, Louis Adekola said, “We knew global education was going to be at the centre, but we were also thinking about how does that impact on the African continent as a whole? How do we find that intersection between global education and the future that we envision for the continent? And that was how we thought about that topic. So, what we did was to now look at lenses through which we can explore global education and the future of Africa.
And that’s how we went on with the three sub-themes, which are AI and technology, because we know how AI and technology is changing a lot of things across education, to health, to medicine, to agriculture”.
According to Adekola, AI is transforming a lot of things, even from the way we live our lives on a daily basis. “Technology is also transforming a lot of things, because the things that we used to in the past are not the way we’re doing now, technology has advanced a lot of things. But we also need to know how Africa fares in this conversation around AI and technology. The second one is education and scholarship. I talked about education earlier, but we look at the scale of scholarship not only from the angle of scholarship to go and study. Scholarship in a holistic, academic sort of balance is what we are looking at continues to grow.
I don’t know the exact statistics, but billions of Naira are being made through the creative industry, and so much more will be made in the next couple of years”.
“So, we’re using this event to create an avenue for people to have these conversations, to centre themselves in those conversations, know who they are, and find that place that they are, and then grow from there.
“For these secondary school students, I would start by saying that secondary school students are very important, and my journey to all the things that I’m doing now started when I was in secondary school. I said in my address that my first volunteering experience was when I was 10 years old”.
In addition, keynote speaker, Chude Jideonwo speaking on ‘Unlocking Africa’s Future through Education & Creativity’ said, “AI and technology is the way forward for any business that wants to remain relevant in the global competitiveness. Your ability to adapt quickly helps you to move to where you want to be. Adapting to the new realities takes you where you ought to be because technology and AI will not ask for your permission before it changes.
According to Jideonwo, “work that takes months, years to carry out, now takes you weeks with the advent of AI and technology. And so you understand that your job is to have a mind that is so flexible that you can conceive of the future, and you can constantly be adapting your skills towards that.
